


Team Colours

by sloganeer



Series: Life in Black and White [2]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Backstory, Baseball, Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 08:31:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18090959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sloganeer/pseuds/sloganeer
Summary: In Patrick’s closet, his Rose Video polo shirt hung on a hanger next to his suit jacket—with a collared shirt and tie already picked out to match. His dress shoes were polished and ready, lined up next to his baseball cleats.





	Team Colours

**HOME**

It would be weird if he wore a tie every day to school, but everyone on the baseball team wore jackets and ties on game day. Even the guys who thought it was stupid, who unknotted their ties after homeroom and stuffed their jackets in their lockers, they did it because it was tradition. Because it was for the team.

Because a tie on game day was as much a uniform as the number on your back.

In Patrick’s closet, his Rose Video polo shirt hung on a hanger next to his suit jacket—with a collared shirt and tie already picked out to match. His dress shoes were polished and ready, lined up next to his baseball cleats.

The Rose Video uniform was a red shirt (of course), but the bottom half was up to each employee. Most kids wore jeans (Patrick asked his team to, please, wear black ones at least); some girls wore skirts.

Patrick’s mom bought him a pair of black straight leg chinos. He kept them ironed, with a crease down the centre of each leg. He was doing his own laundry by then, after Mom had turned a load of the Brewer family’s white socks and underwear pink. His team uniform had to be stain-treated weekly.

Rachel cared very much about what other kids thought about her outfits, but not so much about Patrick’s. He learned early in their relationship that the more plainly he dressed, the less attention he drew. It worked at parties and on group dates, when Rachel was otherwise distracted by her own friends.

Patrick was there, but he didn’t have to perform.

At college, he was on his own for the first time after the first big breakup (there had been several during high school, but none had lasted longer than a week). At college, things would be different. That’s what people told him.

Patrick was hoping he would be different, but he didn’t actually know what kind of different he wanted.

He left his Rose Video uniform, his baseball jersey, his jacket and tie at home. He packed two pairs of light chinos, two pairs of dark, five button down shirts (in three shades of blue), a week’s worth of socks and underwear, one pair of sneakers, one pair of Brogues.

Then he showed up at his first econ class, and no one else was dressed business casual. No one else was even awake.

Patrick was finally away from home, in this place where they told him he would find people like him, people who care, people who had big dreams. Most of the other business students Patrick met didn’t even care enough to change out of their pyjamas.

But he tried out for the baseball team, and he made a few friends. He even tried dating, before Rachel came back. She transferred second year so they could be together, and they stayed together that time until graduation.

Patrick wore his business casual uniform. He wore the tie Rachel bought him for their anniversary, though it didn’t match his jacket. He became the favourite RA on campus because he was the only one with an iron.

No one ever asked what he was wearing.

He wondered what David was wearing as soon as he walked into Patrick’s makeshift office in Ray’s front room. He couldn’t stop thinking about those pants (skirt?) as he watched David leave, as he listened to David’s messages, as he wondered what he might do to get David to come back.

Patrick’s uniform helped him blend in and avoid the questions he couldn’t answer. But David’s uniform, it helped Patrick understand the man hiding beneath the clothes.

-

**AWAY**

“So you remember my friend, Clark?” Patrick said, slowly. He had been outside to check on the produce while David was behind the counter, doodling some new designs. It was the last hour before closing, and today, it was a slow one. Now was a good time to bring up the question he’d been working on all day.

“You know I’m not good with names.” David didn’t look up. “I need more context.”

“The tall guy on my baseball team. He brought the chilli to the year-end potluck.”

“Yes,” David said. He put down his marker. “I remember your friend, Clark.”

Patrick grinned, remembering how David had not only finished his bowl of chilli, but scammed Patrick into feeding him bites from his own.

“So Clark has three boys.”

“Ohh-kay.” David crossed his arms over his chest. Patrick was enjoying this more than he had expected.

“They’re in elementary school, and Clark is an assistant coach on their little league team.”

Patrick bent down to check the products on the lower shelves, anything he could do to prolong David’s torment. He also knew that watching David twist himself up with anxiety would make him cave and ruin the reveal.

“Remember that awful pizza place in Elmdale?”

He knew David remembered that awful pizza place in Elmdale, of course. They had gone there for their fourth date and both got sick on the drive home. He had to pull the car over twice.

“Just come over here,” David burst out, flapping his hands. “I can’t follow this conversation down your twisting mind trails.”

“Mind trails?” Patrick smirked. David narrowed his eyes in Patrick’s direction, but he was smirking, too. Never in Patrick’s life had teasing felt so much like foreplay.

Rounding the product tables, he joined David behind the counter. He reached down and closed David’s sketchbook, but never took his eyes off David’s. He watched David watch his body as he boosted himself up to sit.

The only permanent change to Patrick’s uniform had been a little more skin for his boyfriend to ogle.

This was his favourite time of any day, the time when they could unwind a little, when the customers didn’t get in the way of their rules. It was late in the day. They were alone together in their shop, and Patrick wanted to be kissed.

“The pizza place in Elmdale was finally shut down by the health department.”

David, who had been staring at lips, nodded when Patrick nodded, but he was still confused.

“Clark’s sons’s team was sponsored by the pizza place,” Patrick continued. He opened his legs to let David in. “Clark asked me if I might know a business interested in becoming the new sponsor.”

“And you want me to pass this information onto Stevie and my dad at the motel?” David made himself smaller so he could kiss Patrick’s jaw.

“I told him that I did, in fact, know an interested business, but I would have to consult his partner first.”

“Seduce his partner, you mean.”

Patrick tucked his fingers inside the ripped holes in David’s jeans. “Fielder’s choice.”

“Don’t start with me, Brewer.”

-

**HOME**

“I thought you had to have dinner with your family,” Patrick said. That was how David had announced it when he arrived at the store that morning. Honestly, Patrick was looking forward to a night by himself—the Jays were playing a double header, and he had recorded the first game.

He was only on the first of his six-pack, and the pizza hadn’t arrived yet by the time Patrick heard a key turn in his lock. David had his regular overnight bag on his shoulder.

“Um, my family is having a family dinner with Ted, and apparently, I’m not invited,” David explained.

“Oh.” Patrick paused the game. He tumbled over the back of the couch and walked straight into David’s arms.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Not really,” David said. But he leaned in when Patrick kissed his cheek, and he nodded when Patrick held up a bottle of Prosecco. (He tried to keep one in the fridge for moments exactly like this.)

“It’s no big deal, really” David said, once they were settled on the couch, waving away the bad thoughts with a glass in his hand. “Though, brace yourself for our turn for dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Rose next week.”

“I’m braced,” Patrick assured him. He put his arm around David’s neck and pulled him in close to whisper in his ear. “I ordered your pizza.”

“Really?” David asked. “But I wasn’t going to be here tonight.”

Pulling David down on top of his body, Patrick said, “I guess I was hoping I might have some late night company.”

David hummed a happy noise against Patrick’s lips. “Pizza does taste very good cold the next morning.”

“Agreed.”

Their tongues met, softly, wetly, but there was no rush in the kiss. It was a comfortable kiss. Patrick liked comfortable.

“Wait a minute.” David pushed himself up, settling himself on Patrick’s lap. Patrick grabbed hold of David’s hands and tried to pull him back down. “Are you just softening me up so I’ll say yes to your Little League plan?”

“I already promised you could redesign their uniforms, David.”

His mouth twisted, and his eyes sparkled, and David let Patrick press their bodies together. They kissed until pizza delivery buzzed the door.

“I’ve got it,” Patrick said, moving David off of his body and grabbing for his wallet on the table, all without separating their lips. “One second,” he promised.

While Patrick paid at the door, he heard the baseball game on the TV again. David had the remote in his hand, and he turned the volume down, but not all the way.

He smiled at Patrick over the back of the couch, making grabby hands for the pizza.

-

**AWAY**

“Hey, Brewsky, you made it.” Ronnie waved from her seat behind home plate. She had probably shown up an hour early just to claim the best seats in the park.

“Be nice,” David said, nothing close to a whisper.

Patrick sent her a tight smile, then walked away before anything else happened. He was carrying the pop-up tent and had to go back for the table and chairs so David could set up their booth.

The Creek Wild Roses would play their first game against the Elmdale Hammers today. Unfortunately, it was on enemy territory, but Patrick knew his team was up for the challenge. Ronnie waved her inflatable hammer at him every time she caught him watching her team warming up.

Clark wandered over to help Patrick with the tent, while David drew the chalkboard sign to let the crowd know what was on sale today.

“Smart move, guys,” Clark said, picking up the bottles David had just turned label out. “The pizza place always hosted our year-end banquet, but imagine how much more money they could’ve made if they sold slices between innings.”

“This was David’s idea,” Patrick explained. He told David his attendance wasn’t mandatory, but once the uniforms came back from the print shop, once David figured out how much Patrick liked the look of him in that black and white baseball shirt, those three-quarter sleeves showing off his dark-haired forearms, that red rose printed over his heart, David had willingly joined him for every game.

That’s how David got to talking with some moms in the concession line, realised how long and boring these little league games could be, every weekend, the obligation. If they set up a booth of Rose Apothecary products, he explained, it would give David and any other bored parents something to do during the lulls, as well as off-set the cost of closing the store on game days.

“You’re obviously the brains of this operation,” Clark told David, who gave him that familiar customer service smile. Patrick rubbed David’s back, then led Clark away to let his boyfriend work in peace.

Most of Patrick’s team had come to watch this game. Elmdale was the centre of their sprawling collection of rural towns, an easy car distance from everything else. His baseball friends were gathered around the concession stand. Beer wasn’t allowed at kids’s games, but once Twyla overheard Patrick complaining about the tea selection after one frosty morning game, she convinced the owner of Café Tropical to pay for a coffee cart.

“The usual, Patrick?” she asked.

He nodded. He kept half an ear on the teams’s conversation, quickly falling into good-natured rivalry for the parents of players on the opposing teams. He tried not to sneak looks at Ronnie, gloating over her team, last year’s regional champions.

He watched David circling their table, touching each bottle, moving flowers from one vase to another. He watched David light up when a familiar mom approached, wearing a Wild Rose cap with her ponytail pulled through the back.

Patrick took his orange pekoe and caramel macchiato from Twyla, nodded to Clark and his team, and walked back to where David was offering samples of hand lotion.

“My MVP,” David gushed when Patrick gave him his coffee. He kissed Patrick’s cheek, too, clearly in a very good mood.

Patrick pulled his own cap off his head, smoothing David’s hair back with one hand and placing the black cap with the embroidered rose on David’s head. He’d probably get an exasperated lecture later, but right now, Patrick didn’t care.

He and David were on the same team, and Patrick wanted everyone to know.


End file.
